6. Import Bulk Data Tutorial

In the first four tutorials of the series, Partners learned how to
package On Demand scripts for reporting with product variables to create the
Integration Wizard. Customers learned how to activate the product integration.
Partners also learned how to run reports that included data from both their own
and Customer data collections. In the fifth article of the series, Classify
Partner data using the Partner API, you learned how to create Product Builder
scripts to classify data using the Partner API.

In this article, you will learn how to import this external data by:

Creating a new data source
using the Product Builder Create script.

Packaging the Product
Builder script into the Integration Wizard.

Assuming the role of the
Customer, in this case, JJ. Esquire, to execute the Integration Wizard. This
will run the Product Builder script and generate the new data source.

Writing Java, C# or PHP code
to import the off-line sales data from the campaign into JJ. Esquire's report
suite using the Partner API.

Lastly, you will also learn
how to run a report using the same On Demand scripts you created in the first
tutorial of the series,
Create On Demand scripts to generate reports. The On Demand
scripts will allow you to create a report to verify that the bulk data was
imported.

Prerequisite knowledge, system permissions and environment
setup

This article is for PHP,
Java or C# developers with web and XML experience.

Partners must have a
Developer Connection account to be able to create scripts. Follow the
directions in the Setup your environment and authenticated access to the
Partner API.

Download code files for this tutorial

This article displays code inline to the discussion but you can also
download the code for PHP, Java or C# to explore on your own.

Follow the directions in the Setup your environment and authenticated
access to the Partner API and then unzip these files to your project folder.

An overview of importing bulk data using the Partner API

Consider this scenario: A Analytics Customer has collected data about
its e-commerce store in a report suite. You have created a data connectors
product that allows store visitors to hold products, pick them up and pay for
them at specific locations in their cities. This offline data is not available
in the Customer's report suite but they want you to provide it so they can run
more complete reports about their products and revenue.

You can use the Partner API to import bulk data to the Customer's
report suite. The following figure shows that you will upload your data, using
the Partner API, to a temporary queue called a
data source. From there, the Adobe Data Center will process and
validate the data before importing it into the Customer's report suite.

Importing data involves two steps:

The creation of the data source using Product Builder scripts.

The import of data into the data source using the Partner API
and code that you write in Java, PHP or .NET.

You will learn how to perform both of these steps in the remainder of
this article.

An overview of creating data sources using a Product Builder
script

You use Product Builder scripts to create a new data source in your
Analytics report suite. Once the data source is created, you can later upload
data to it using the Partner API.

There are two types of Product Builder scripts,
create and
edit. Some tasks require both, but creating data sources only
requires the create script because data sources are not edited once you created
them. You create Product Builder scripts using the Adobe API Explorer, which is
a web interface that allows you to select web services methods and see the
associated request and response structures.

In the
Create On Demand scripts to generate reports tutorial, you used
Report Builder and Adobe API Explorer to generate On Demand scripts. However,
Report Builder cannot access the Adobe Admin API, which is required to create a
data source. Therefore, you will only use the Adobe API Explorer for this
article.

Product Builder scripts automate processes that you want to initialize
during data connectors product integration. Therefore, you will package them in
the Integration Wizard that the Customer will execute.

An overview of importing bulk data into the report suite

As you learned in earlier tutorials and articles of this series, a
Customer will execute the Integration Wizard. Since the Product Builder script
is part of the wizard, it will run, which will create the new data source (see
Step 2 in the following figure).

Now you, as the Partner, can upload new data into the data source by
writing Java, PHP or .NET code that accesses the Partner API (Step 3 in the
following figure).

Once the Product Builder script has been run in the Customer's
environment, Partners can generate reports on the imported data using On Demand
scripts (Step 4 in the following figure).

To learn more about using On Demand scripts to create reports, work
through the first four tutorials of this series.